Oil Transportation: ENI's Fleet, Italian Ports and Pipelines (1950S-1970S)

Journal of Business and Social Science Review Issue: Vol. 1; No.7; July 2020 pp.46-68 ISSN 2690-0866(Print) 2690-0874 (Online) Website: www.jbssrnet.com E-mail: [email protected] Oil Transportation: ENI’s fleet, Italian Ports and Pipelines (1950s-1970s) Ilaria Suffia Research Fellow in Economic History Università Cattolica of Milan. Abstract: To make a profitable business, oil multinationalshave to include in their strategies the issue to transport crude from production sites to markets.EnteNazionaleIdrocarburi-Eni is the Italian state-owned oil company and a relevant oil player in the second half of the 20th century. This article focuses on Enito poin outthat oil businesses,to overcome trading limitations, invested in the creation of an oil transportation systemincluding naval fleets, ports and pipelines. Initially, the article displays the relationship between the oil market growth and the development of crude transportationsafter WWII until the early 1970s. Secondly, it analyses Eni‟s fleet, describingthe enlargement path of vesselsas well asthe increase in petroleum ships size, emphasising their limitations and constraints. Furthermore, it gives an international perspective. Finally, it analyses the development of ports and pipelines, i.e. the final tiles that complete the oil supply chain. Introduction In the 20th century,petroleumbecame a pivotal energy resource in developed nations, as well as a key component in the manufacturing of products and goods. Beyond the economic impact, the exploitation of oil and its derivatives affectedinnovations and technologies andit had repercussion on politics and on international relationships. No less important, it influenced societies and cultures, changing lifestyles and creating a „petroleum culture‟i. However, a critical feature of oil is that its possession varies from country to country and some of the main oil-consuming nations do not have this natural resource, or have very limited quantities of it. In particular, Western European nations are historically importers of it. Moreover, the areas where the accumulation of crude oil is greater are often far from the consumption centresii. Therefore, to move oil from the natural sites to markets is inevitably a necessity for companies trading this raw material. Oil industry has been studied in several respects, ranging from technical and technological features to political, geo-political, social and environmental aspects. Business history researches investigated on the history of some single companies but they have also focused their analysis on some particular features of oil firms, such as property and entrepreneurship, managerial capabilities, human capital, strategies and policies, especially linked to the exploitation and the use of oil and the production of fuel or petroleum derivativesiii. Oil companies have also caught the interest of multinational historians, who have studied, among others, some of the most important international majorsiv. However, it seems that oil issues closely related to transportation have not been pursued further in the literature. The „Black Gold Rush‟ began in the early 20th century but it intensified after WWI, when Western Europe countries began to struggle to obtain some control over this resource of which they had not a significant productionv. In this period, the „Seven Sisters‟vi already dominated the international oil market, but other oil-importing countries, namely Italy, France, Germany and Japan, made their moves to secure petroleum supplies. In these cases, the control over the resource was acquired often establishing state-owned enterprises, as in Italy with the AgenziaGeneraleItalianaPetroli-Agip, then EnteNazionaleIdrocarburi-Eni, and in France with the CompagnieFrançaise des Pétroles-CFP. Oil majors operated according to a vertical integration policy and „each major was able to co-ordinate the flow of oil, under its own control, from its oil fields to its market‟vii, dictating a certain degree of oligopoly, if not even monopoly, in this market. Consequentially, the vertical-integration pattern was a strategy that those enterprises that wanted to enter the oil market yearn for. 46 Journal of Business and Social Science Review ISSN 2690-0866(Print) 2690-0874 (Online) Vol. 1; No.7; July 2020 For instance, ENI aimed „to find its own sources of crude oil‟, therefore its policy was to offer to „oil- producing countries more generous terms for new concessions than the majors were willing to do‟viii. In terms of transportation, Eni owned its own fleet and it ensured its position in the management of ports and pipelines. Objectives and sources. The expansion of crude oil production and consumption began in the second half of the 19th centuryix. By the early 20th, United States and Russia were the main oil producers and users. In the first decades of 20th century oil was discovered in other regions, namely South America and the Middle East, and „these new discoveries were to alter radically the face of oil industry‟x as they gradually became the most important areas for the supply of crude oil. This also meant that oil transportation movements increased. Petroleum companies, on the one hand, strengthened their naval fleet and, on the other hand, they laid pipelines to link oilfields to refineries. Ports also gained the interest of these companies because they were part of both the oil supply and distribution chain. The present study focuses on these last issues. It aims to evaluate three main points, starting from the development of oil market. The second point is the analysis of the strategies and the governance on transportations of petroleum companies. In particular, our contribution analyses the development of oil naval transportations throughout the changes in companies‟ fleets. Finally, it investigates the role of ports and pipelines as connecting points between oil movements. The period of reference goes from the post WWII years up to 1970s and it corresponds to a time span in which the most developed countries adopted crude oil as one of their most important energy resources. The article concentrates on a case study, that of Enixi, and compares it with the experiences of other oil companies, in particular with British Petroleum and Shellxii. Eni is the Italian leader in the national oil business and, in general, in energy resources in Italy. The company was built in 1953 and was a state-owned firmxiii. Eni was a holding and the management of the fleet, initially, relayed on Agip and after, in 1957, to Snam. The relationship with ports and the investment in ports were, instead, entrusted to two other subsidiaries: Irom and Stanicxiv. The Eni‟s Annual Reportxv from 1954 to 1975 is the main source, but other documents preserved in Eni‟s Archives enriched the reconstruction of the development of Eni‟s fleet. The literature was used to fill in the analysis of the oil markets and to provide the international perspective. 1)The development of the world oil fleet (1953-1973) and ENI’s position. Already „during 1880s ocean-going steam oil tankers began to challenge the dominance of sailing vessels in the sea transportation of petroleum‟xvi. However, investments and developments in tankers were based on several factors related to the oil market and its forecastsxvii. In particular, the expansion of the oil fleet was estimated on expectations of an increase in consumption and in demand and on a pressure to raise production, especially after WWII. Literature points out the main growth cycles in the history of oil industry based on the dominant use of oil. The first phase, 1860-1900, was defined as a „lamp oil cycle‟. After that, the era of the „fuel cycle‟ began. From 1900 to 1940 there was an „American cycle‟, because this country was the first starting to exploit oil as a fuel. The „International cycle‟ took root from the 1940s and still continuesxviii, thanks to the intensification in the exploitation of low-cost oil resources in the Arabian/Persian Gulf area since the 1930s. In the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, the growth of the world oil production was strong and uninterrupted. The first stop to this trend was in the first years of the 1970s, when the oil market reached its maturity point. Therefore, in the 1980s oil production stagnated and this long phase of increasing production ended. The consumption side had a very similar path: it first expanded, then it reached its maturity point and finally it undertook a phase of stagnation. Oil consumption increased because of two factors. On the one hand, oil substituted coal as main energy resource and, on the other hand, after WWII transportations and processing costs reduced, allowing economies of scale for the exploitation of oil and its derivativesxix. Table 1.1 shows the expansion of oil market in the world in the period between 1953 and 1975, displaying the series of oil production, consumption and refiningxx. These data confirm that oil exploitation grew during the last century and there was an increase both on the demand (consumption) and on the supply side (production and refining). Furthermore, the data underline that refining capacity developed a little faster than production and consumption. 47 Journal of Business and Social Science Review ISSN 2690-0866(Print) 2690-0874 (Online) Vol. 1; No.7; July 2020 After WWII, especially from the early 1950s, the energy demand raised and energy industries, as the Italian Eni, were aware of the fact that „hydrocarbons will be called to participate in increasing proportion to the coverage of the world's energy needs‟xxi, also because there were „fewer opportunities for expansion of other energy sources‟xxii. At the middle of the 1950s, hydrocarbons supplied almost 45% of the energy produced (for consumption) in the world, when in 1905 they provided only 5%. In the next years, oil gained one of the leading positions among the primary energy resourcesxxiii. Table 1.1: World oil production, consumption and refining, 1953-1975 (million tons).

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